April 2014

April 30, 2014

After receiving $8.7 million in federal funds to develop wave-to-electricity buoys off the southern Oregon coast, Ocean Power Technologies has packed up and moved to Australia. No worries, mate - they got some of our money as well; nearly half a million, in fact:

The Oregon Wave Energy Trust, a nonprofit, state-financed group, spent $430,000 in state lottery money helping Ocean Power navigate the process of seeking a permit.

Permit in hand, they left us holding an empty bag. Another win for governor Retread!

It's beginning to look as though governor Retread may have exhausted his political capital, as a poll conducted prior to the highly publicised collapse of "Cover Oregon" showed him leading his likely Republican opponent, Dennis Richardson, by a mere 3%. And after all, Retread has said on several occasions that he has "no problem with being held accountable" for the CO debacle.

For the first time in decades, it's somewhat possible that an Oregon Democratic actually may be held accountable. Retread was already struggling in the face of the collapse of efforts to cram light rail from Porkland into Vancouver, Washington after having famously stated, "No light rail, no bridge. No joke." To which people in Washington state replied, "Okay, you win. No bridge."

Failing at that, he unsuccessfully pushed for an Oregon-only light rail bridge project, which also went down in flames reminiscent of the Hindenburg. The poll was conducted following these events, but before the Cover Oregon implosion brought the state derisive national attention.

Meanwhile, Dr. Monica Wehby continues to gain traction heading into the May primary contest aimed at ultimately taking out freshman Senator Merkely. As might be expected, Portland-area Lefties hate her; among the spittle and drool they fling are comments like "she's got no experience". It appears that they conveniently overlook the fact that she's served on national medical boards - something that the governor they keep electing has never done.

Rabid lefty Rep. Alan Grayson's in a bitter divorce/annulment case with his lovely Lolita. His lawyer's uncovered the fact that she was married already when she married Grayson; the divorce from hubby #1 didn't get finalized until three or four years after the new marriage, by all appearances. And so what began as a messy divorce has now turned even worse, with Grayson asking for an annulment and accusing the lovely Lolita of bigamy. He's also suing her for cash.

Seriously...what the hell do you expect when you hitch your pony to a "Lolita"? The "liberal firebrand" doesn't mind screwing everyone else in the country, but when it happens to him, he gets all self-righteous.

As we prepare to leave Afghanistan, plans are underway at the Pentagon to destroy $1.2 billion of perfectly useful ammunition and missiles.

"Despite years of effort, the Army, Navy and Air Force still don't have an efficient process for doing something as basic as sharing excess bullets. This Government Accountability Office (GAO) report clearly shows that our military's antiquated systems lead to millions of dollars in wasteful ammunition purchases."

To say nothing of wasteful destruction.

Not to be upstaged in terms of overall waste, the USPS Postmaster General decided to kill the popular and money-saving startup, Outbox, even though cooperating with them would save the USPS billions of dollars. Outbox developed a method of ridding their customers of junk mail though agreements with Austin and San Francisco post offices: after customers signed up, the post offices held the mail, and Outbox picked it up.

They wanted to allow consumers to digitize all of their postal mail so that individuals could get rid of junk mail, keep important things organized and never have to go out to their mailbox again. They set out to “redefine a long cherished but broken medium of communication: postal mail.” Customers would opt-in for $5 a month with “Outbox” to have their mail redirected, opened, scanned and available online or through a phone app. Consumers could then click on a particular scanned letter and ask that it be physically delivered, or that certain types of letters not be opened (e.g., bills etc.).

Their customers loved the service, and the post offices saved money by not having to physically deliver to those customers. It seemed like a win-win. Outbox made big news, and that's when the two co-founders were called to Washington, D.C. to meet with the Postmaster General. They thought that USPS wanted to discuss further expansion. They couldn't have been more wrong.

When Evan and Will got called in to meet with the Postmaster General they were joined by the USPS’s General Counsel and Chief of Digital Strategy. But instead, Evan recounts that US Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe “looked at us” and said “we have a misunderstanding. ‘You disrupt my service and we will never work with you.’” Further, “‘You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren’t our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.”’

Well, that certainly cleared things up in a hurry. As Outbox now could no longer pick up all of their customers' mail at the post offices, they tried a different tack: buying vehicles, hiring drivers, and sending them around to each customer's address to pick up the mail. The additional financial burden was unsustainable, and the company was recently forced to shut down.

In February, 2014, they announced on their blog that they were shutting down their company because they could not profitably scale the company unless the Post Office allowed consumers to forward their mail.

In their parting message, they explained, “You may think government organizations are completely, insanely backwards; you are wrong—they are worse.”

In FY 2013, USPS posted a loss of $5 billion. But at least they killed digital mail, and can continue to "serve their customers" - which according to them, does not mean you.

April 29, 2014

With the US departure from Afghanistan in the works, the Afghans want 90 attack helicopters. So Obama's going to spend over a billion dollars on those. But wait - lest you think this is a good thing for America (think of all the jobs!) - he's not spending that money here; he's buying them from Russia. So much for his "tough economic sanctions". Oh yeah, and the maintenance contracts will naturally go to the Russians as well.

Meanwhile, one Russian official's response to the "sanctions" is exactly what has been discussed here from time to time ever since Barky started threatening Pooty-Poot with his magic pen: "Hey, how you boys planning to get your astronauts to the ISS?" Man, who couldn't have seen that coming?

While the White House insists that the sanctions put in place to punish Moscow for its actions in Ukraine are causing pain, Rogozin — a well-known prankster on social media — reminded Americans of a way they need Russia, tweeting: “After analysing the sanctions against our space industry I suggest the US delivers its astronauts to the ISS with a trampoline.”

As if that's not bad enough, there's the continuing Syrian and Egyptian firestorms, and Lurch claimed that Israel's on the verge of apartheid (evidently unaware that Arabs serve in the Knesset alongside Israelis).

In light of all of the above, Barky's Defense Secretary Hagel has issued a directive to all services: review your hairstyle policies. You can't make this stuff up.

The latest business pulling up stakes is Toyota, which is relocating its national headquarters from Torrance CA to Plano TX, taking 5,000 jobs with it. On the bright side, Torrance can use the building - they need another welfare office. Especially after the next amnesty's passed.

It's not much of a leap, this being Portland and all. Maybe the 23 year-old was just trying to keep the place weird, in which case, he succeeded: stopped by security staff at a Southeast Fred Meyer store on suspicion of theft, the guy pulled out a gun and "brandished" it, then ran off.

You might want to wait for the prices to come down a bit, because it's a spendy little thing at the moment. About the size of a microwave, the Zymatic makes it easy to brew beer in your kitchen. A little startup called Picobrew, out of Seattle and the brainchild of a former Microsoft engineer, has prototypes in the field already - and master craft brewers in the area love them.

They're using the prototypes to experiment with recipes before upscaling them to their commercial operations.

The units will ship with beer recipes, as well, and if you've ever done homebrewing, you know what a pain it can be. This could revolutionize the homebrew industry.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey wants to empower an obscure federal agency to begin scouring the Internet, TV and radio for speech it finds threatening — a plan met with jeers from defenders of the First Amendment.

“This proposed legislation is worse than merely silly. It is dangerous,” civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate said. “It is not up to Sen. Markey, nor to the federal government, to define for a free people what speech is, and is not, acceptable.”

Why Markey finds speech threatening during an age in which instructions for making bombs are only a few clicks away is unclear. One thing, however, seems abundantly clear: the proper place for loons is on a lake - not in Congress.